A Smarter Way to Reconcile: How to Receive Shipments in Half the Time

Receiving vendor orders in restaurants no longer requires a pencil, a clipboard, and a PC. There's a better way.

In many restaurants, data gets entered twice all the time, particularly by operators performing critical back office functions like inventory counting and reconciling. Fortunately, there is a solution for this.

The process of receiving vendor orders usually goes like this:

1. An employee stands at the back door or loading dock making notes on paper about what goods they’re receiving.
2. They take those notes to a computer in the back office and enter them into their inventory management system.

Perhaps GMs at your restaurant do this, and you don't give it a second thought. But like we said, there is a solution, and it involves using the technology surrounding us.

Leverage the Power of Your Mobile Device for Inventory Receiving

Remember when we used to print out directions to take with us when we were driving to a new place? Remember when we had to manage our bank accounts in miniature books that printed every transaction? Remember when you had to stay home to call someone? Those days are over because mobile technology has changed the way we live. Why shouldn't it change the way we receive vendor orders and manage data?

We all know that smartphones can do amazing things. Today, your back office operations platform also leverages mobile technology, too, and can reap incredible benefits.

Receiving goods from vendors has never been easier. Now, rather than writing down your received vendor orders and uploading them into a back office system, now when a vendor shows up you simply tap a row on your phone screen to access your order. Then you work through the product list by entering the physical quantities of everything you received. Once that's done, you're done. The data uploads to your system over the internet. No more double entry!

The right mobile app for receiving vendor orders should contain plenty of features and functions to simplify even single data entry. Once the invoice number is known in the app, the invoice quantities should populate, allowing the receiver to know how much they should have received versus how much they actually received. With the right app, you can also always know your place, so you don't make the mistake of recounting - which nobody wants to do.

Reconciler Makes Receiving Vendor Goods Easy

CrunchTime has developed a mobile application that allows restaurants to easily receive vendor orders and upload the data to the core CrunchTime BOH platform. No longer do they have to write down the order quantities and re-enter that data into the system. The data takes care of itself!

Not in an area where you can upload data over the internet? Not a problem. Some receiving areas might have spotty service, but that doesn't prevent users from entering data into the app. Once the device is in a good cell reception or WiFi area, the upload process takes place.

Check out Reconciler here.